If you have a high-quality 1080p MKV copy of Saw VI and need a smaller 720p version—perhaps for a portable device, to save storage space, or for smoother playback—you can do this easily using free software. Here’s how.
Before diving into the “how,” let’s cover the “why.” Saw VI is a visually dark film with rapid editing and torture set-pieces. However, downscaling from 1080p to 720p still maintains excellent visual fidelity, especially for screens under 27 inches.
Yes. HandBrake and FFmpeg preserve subtitle tracks. Just check the Subtitles tab before encoding.
Go to handbrake.fr and download the latest version. Install like any other program.
The Saw films are notoriously dark. Poorly compressed dark scenes result in "banding" (blocky artifacts in shadows). To avoid this during your downscale:
You’ll get a clean 720p MKV of Saw VI at roughly 1.5–3 GB (instead of 6–10 GB for 1080p), ready for any media player.
The flickering green "Conversion Complete" bar was the only light in
’s cramped apartment. He had spent three hours hunting for a way to downscale his massive 1080p MKV copy of
to 720p—his ancient laptop simply couldn't handle the bitrate of the original file without stuttering like a broken record.
"Free," he’d muttered while clicking through shady forums. "It has to be free."
He finally found a tool on a site that looked like it hadn't been updated since 2006. The interface was a single button: TRIM THE FAT
. He’d dragged the file in, watched the progress bar crawl, and waited. Now, with the 720p file ready, he hit play.
The movie started normally—the iconic, grinding industrial score filled his headphones. But as the first trap began, Elias leaned closer. The resolution was lower, yes, but the colors were wrong. The shadows weren’t black; they were a deep, bruised purple.
Then came the first jump cut. It didn't go to the next scene. Instead, the screen filled with static for a split second, and a line of white text scrolled across the bottom of the player: “ASPECT RATIO ADJUSTED. LIFE RATIO EVALUATED.”
Elias tried to pause, but the spacebar was dead. On screen, the characters in the movie stopped screaming. They turned toward the camera, their lower-resolution faces pixellated and haunting.
"You wanted it smaller," the figure of Jigsaw said, his voice distorted by a low-bitrate crunch. "You wanted to save space. You wanted the experience without the cost."
The laptop’s cooling fan began to whine at a piercing frequency. Elias reached for the power cord, but a sharp
from the speakers threw him back. The video file began to delete itself in real-time, the file size dropping from 2.2GB to 1GB, then 500MB.
As the file size shrank, the room felt tighter. The walls seemed to draw in, the ceiling lowering an inch for every megabyte lost.
"Optimization is a choice, Elias," the tinny voice crackled from the dying speakers. "How much of yourself can you compress before there's nothing left to play?" The screen went black. The file was 0KB.
Elias sat in the total darkness of his room, the walls now brushing against his shoulders. He reached for his phone to call for help, but his fingers felt thin—flat. He looked down and saw his hands were blurring into jagged, 8-bit edges.
He had found his free conversion. But he was no longer a 1080p man in a 1080p world. or perhaps a different tech-themed short story?
In the Video tab:
For Saw VI, RF 21 or 22 is a sweet spot.
Click "Start Encode." Depending on your computer's CPU, this process can take 30 minutes to a few hours.